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I am not aware of any service which crosses over platforms (ie would include MacOS, etc) natively, but if you have some classroom management software such as Impero that may have a messaging function which you could use? Dave

Apologies I may have made a mistake - based on the blog above, and the authentication error on your test you need to set the authentication to "Basic" for ActiveSync, not NTLM or Integrated. Dave

I have just had a quick look on my machine, and in the components of Office 2010 (I have ProPlus installed) there is a component available for Optical Character Recognition (OCR), you will find it under Office Tools in the customisation wizard. That should allow you to do imports of scanned images in to Word and have it convert to text. As for the actual scanning, you may want to install the tools/software which come with the scanner. I know that the HP one we have in the office supports "scan to MS Word" as an action which also includes OCR. Not sure if it uses the Office OCR or its own in-built software for that, but it does work ok. Dave

I would recommend starting with https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/ which can help you test whether your exchange server is connectable to from the outside world. iPhones will use the ActiveSync service to collect their emails (if you are setting them up as a connection to Exchange Email) so that is the test you need to run. Should give you a good indication of what the problem may be. You will need to ensure that you have published ActiveSync fully (if you are using something like ISA or TMG as your gateway) with Integrated authentication (as opposed to forms based which is nicer for OWA users). Dave

It has been quite a while since I did this with NT4, but many modern network printers still support the generic printer drivers which were included in NT4 through emulation. If you had a network printer you could simply create the IP printer port on the NT4 machine, and use one of the generic drivers. Dave

We came across this recently - there is a Windows Update for RDP on Windows 7 which also breaks the ability to connect to UAG published remote desktop sessions. Roll on SP3... Dave Edit: Just realised that is mentioned in the TechNet Article! Doh.

I believe it is still possible to get a download of WinInstall LE (the free version) if you register. It is quite simple to use once you work out the interfaces although not that intuitive. Does include a Discover process which does the Before/After scans, but you do have to "tidy up" the MSI afterwards to ensure common windows changes are not rolled into the MSI. Dave

I'm fairly sure that it will not automatically do the log file cycling, but you could look at TTCP.exe for at least receiving the data? I am sure that someone more gifted than me could put together a script which will cycle logs for you. Dave

That is likely because JPG does not support transparent areas of a file. try converting to PNG instead and you should find that works in most situations. Dave

Computer accounts change their "password" automatically on a regular basis (I don't mean the Administrator user account you are logging on with). Does this server have any FSMO roles or other applications installed which means you need to retain the server? There is another option if not which is to simply power the machine off, delete the account from AD and do an AD meta-data clean-up for the computer account. Dave

Most likely issue here is that the computer account password is out of sync with the domain. How old was the backup you restored from?

Have you tried running DCDIAG on this server before running DCPROMO? This should ensure the server has no issues which may be causing the problem.

Which server version is your file server? I will get a test VM set up and take some screenshots for you. Dave

I have spoken to our product support team and they have advised me that all Windows 8 machines we supply have the relevant information in the BIOS for licensing Windows 7 and Windows 8. This should mean that all you have to do to access the downgrade rights would be to request a Windows 7 re-installation (Recovery) CD/DVD from Dell for that model and you will not be asked for a product key (assuming that they do the same). Regards David

I would; remove the machine from the domain, reboot, rename it, reboot, add to the domain, reboot, test for problem. Yes that is tedious but the reboots will make sure nothing strange is going on. If after the above it works, the problem probably relates to a computer account already in the domain of the original name, or part of the process of renaming and adding to the domain you have configured in WDS. If after the above it does not work you probably have a slightly more complicated problem with your image which is preventing networking or domain operations from working correctly. I would go back to your image and see if that works. Hope that helps. Dave

That would be a good investigative approach. Before you do, is there anything in the event log relating to authentication errors on the domain before the error about accessing the DC for GP refresh? Dave

Daft question maybe, but is the client machine being given the IP address' of your internal DNS servers for name resolution? Have you tested that your AD domain name, and DC server names resolve correctly using these DNS servers? nslookup domainname.tld nslookup DCname.domainname.tld Should both resolve correctly, almost instantly and with no errors Dave

I think if the site (or some of Google's other domains - image files come from gstatic.com) has been put into the Restricted Sites or the Security level is set to High then you can have problems like this. Dave

I believe that should be possible with the policies, but I have not configured it for a while so will need to test it out. Could you create a file classification (AVI files) create a group (everyone except Year 10 students) and apply a banned policy on the folder structure? Dave

Hi, You may find that you can do this with standard tools built into Windows Servers. If you install/enable the File Server Resource Manager tools (on any server from 2008 or newer) you will find that you get access to what you need. To quote Technet: "Create file screens to block files that belong to particular file groups from being saved on a volume or in a folder tree." Have a look at this article for more info... or drop a message back on here for more advice Dave

From my reading and conversations I think it very likely that the only upgrade path to Exchange 2013 is going to be from Exchange 2010 so I would recommend getting yourself upgraded to 2010. If you are then happy with it you can stay at that version or you could then upgrade further to 2013. The only reason for NOT doing that would be if you wanted to install onto Server 2012. Until the next service pack (due sometime in the next 6 months) for Exchange 2010 you will not be able to install Exchange 2010 onto Server 2012. As you have had a hardware failure already I would recommend installing Exchange 2010 onto Server 2008 R2. Dave

Do you currently use anything in school for a VLE/MLE/online platform such as SharePoint, Moodle, etc? Many products like that have voting, forum, quiz or closed feedback facilities depending on what level of feedback you want. Dave

Sounds good Thanks for the update. Dave

I have not been able to find any specific documentation about Office activation (much like Windows) but what I have found shows that the same rules seem to apply - if the application is already activated it should stay that way. it will discover KMS via DNS, and when it comes to validate activation with the new KMS server should behave the same way as Windows. I would recommend the same as above, using VAMT to force the first 25 machines to re-activate with the new KMS server to get above the threshold. Dave

To answer your question - I cannot find any documentation from Microsoft on changing the KMS server, but I assume that what will happen is that the client will get to its regular KMS renewal time, look up KMS in DNS and go to the new one, try and "renew" its activation, find out that it is a new KMS server and re-activate. The first 25 Win7 clients will get delayed activation, but they re-check every 2 hours until the KMS server becomes fully active. Should not take more than a couple of weeks for the server to become active and all clients be registered with the new KMS server - particularly if your clients are mostly turned off for the summer holidays. I hope that helps. Dave